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The problem with Chrestomanci Castle was that it was simply not big enough for two nine-lifed enchanters. The castle had twenty-three bedrooms, two guest staterooms, a ballroom, four classrooms, a nursery, three parlors, an entire office wing, and one crumbling tower, but there was no way to place Gabriel de Witt and Christopher Chant far enough away from one another to prevent the explosions.
Flavian gamely tried to work the necessary repairs into his lesson plans. There were now so many young magic users in the castle that Flavian had split them up into three groups. The beginning group—which consisted of Conrad, Henrietta, and Bernard—worked only with the non-magical items. Flavian tactfully referred to them as the “intermediate” level students, but everyone knew that they were the remedial group. Sometimes their efforts just made matters worse. Conrad was so bad at reassembling broken objects that Flavian had altogether given up on teaching him technique. One of the tables in the bottom parlor had mysteriously grown an extra leg out of its top when Conrad had attempted to put it back together, and despite the strongest efforts of the teaching staff, the table remained obstinately five-legged. Christopher had laughed himself silly when he saw it, until Conrad pointed out (in a rather exasperated tone) that the table would not have ever needed repairs if Christopher could control his temper. That shut him up.
“It’s not as if I try to destroy parts of the castle, Grant,” Christopher said. “It just happens.” He smoothed out his waistcoat, looking disgruntled. “And Gabriel will keep going on about how he never lost control in his youth! As if I’m some stupid teenager. I already know half of the things Flavian’s still trying to teach me.”
“You might as well fix the parts of the castle you destroy, then,” said Conrad hopefully.
Christopher waved one hand airily. “I leave it to show Gabriel how angry I really am,” he said. “Besides, look at your table. It’s a work of art.”
“You are beyond unbelievable!” Conrad said. “You do realize that we spend half of our lessons now running around the castle after you, attempting to repair the damage you create? Everyone’s tired of it. Flavian hates it.”
“He never mentions it in class,” said Christopher, but he looked slightly uncomfortable. Since Gabriel was still too angry with Christopher to continue his enchanter’s magic class—they’d only arrived home from Stallery two weeks ago, after all—Flavian had taken over Christopher’s education. Flavian was far too much of a pushover to successfully deal with Christopher, so Mordecai Roberts had to be present at every one of Christopher’s lessons. As Gabriel was fond of loudly repeating at dinner, this meant taking up the valuable time of two of his best agents when they could be otherwise employed. “And Mordecai hasn’t said anything.”
“Well, I’m saying something,” Conrad said. “It’s miserable. If I ever again have to watch Bernard levitate pieces of wall for two hours, I shall be extremely angry with you.”
The advanced group had a harder time with the magical repairs. Christopher had only been home for three days when he and Gabriel had a shouting match in the parlor underneath the North Tower, where Flavian and Mordecai shared a workshop. It was as if Christopher had detonated a small bomb underneath the tower. The entire floor disappeared, and Christopher managed to blow a hole in the circular roof before Gabriel slapped a stasis spell on the whole north wing. Michael and Elizabeth spent three solid days scraping dragons’ blood off the walls while Flavian supervised. Luckily for everyone, Gabriel was called to Series Two on urgent business, so there was no chance for Christopher to give a repeat performance.
“I shall always smell like dragons’ blood,” Elizabeth wailed on the third day. “And I’ve singed off the sleeve of my dress.”
Since clothing repair was elementary level magic, Flavian had the intermediate class practice sewing. Although it was better than watching Bernard levitate bits of wall, it was still tedious work. Henrietta was the only one in the intermediate level who could create a straight stitch; Conrad and Bernard were both hopeless. Members of the castle staff started watching the three o’clock lesson before going to tea. Mordecai brought an entire basket of laundry full of rips and tears, but hastily sent it back up to his room when he saw Bernard’s efforts.
“What was this before you started, er, fixing it?” Mordecai asked Bernard, holding up a piece of cloth between his finger and thumb. It was currently a bright blue waistcoat that looked like it would perfectly fit a pudgy baby. Enchanted yellow birds flew across the bottom, chirping cheerily. “Did you try to make the birds move?”
“No,” said Bernard woefully. “And it used to be Christopher’s.”
Mordecai clapped him on the back. “At least you’ve done some good,” he said, although anyone could have predicted that, upon seeing the waistcoat, Christopher would blast the railing of the grand staircase to smithereens. It took the intermediate group two days to piece it back together.
It wasn’t that the intermediate class was terrible at all kinds of magic; they wouldn’t be at Chrestomanci Castle if they didn’t have prodigious magical talent. But general magic working totally escaped Conrad, and it simply did not interest Bernard. He spent most of his time in the castle kitchens, going over the expense accounts with Miss Rosalie. Conrad tried to spend his free time with Christopher, but Christopher grew more insufferable by the day. It did not help that the only two people who could really control Christopher—Gabriel and Mordecai—were often out of the castle on official business. When Mordecai was out, Flavian did not even attempt to have Christopher’s magic lesson.
“Though he might try to clear up after himself, once in awhile,” Flavian huffed to Mordecai, while the intermediate group worked on the staircase. “We know he’s not doing it on purpose, but it really is a bit much!”
Conrad watched Mordecai gently touch Flavian’s arm and speak quietly into his ear; Flavian finally sighed and went back to helping Bernard with his piece of staircase, still shaking his head.
Conrad hung back after the lesson, pretending a great interest in the scalloped edge of the recently repaired banister. Once Flavian started up the stairs (carefully avoiding a piece that Henrietta had jammed in at the end), Conrad ran after him. “What do you think is causing the explosions?” he asked.
Flavian shook his head. “It’s too late for puberty, but that's usually the cause. I believe the Chrestomanci before Gabriel de Witt had a spell of outbursts like these in his youth. He's the reason that tower is crumbling - no matter how many reinforcing spells we put on it, it just keeps eroding. If Christopher keeps this up for much longer, I don't know how the castle will stand under the pressure."
"Puberty?" said Conrad, startled.
"That," said Flavian, "or deep trauma. And you and I both know that Christopher has never experienced anything that could be called even slightly traumatic."
Conrad was inclined to disagree—surely losing seven lives had had some impact on Christopher's psyche—but the next day, Christopher destroyed the plumbing on the third floor, and Conrad lost any reason to feel sorry for Christopher at all.
"What," said Conrad grimly, as he siphoned water off the third floor corridor into a large plastic bucket, "are you thinking when these things happen?"
"I don't know!" said Christopher. He was leaning against the entrance to the stairwell, hands in the pockets of a dove-grey waistcoat, his shirt immaculately pressed. "I just, someone says something unfair, or Gabriel won't leave me alone, or Flavian wants me to repair something, and I get so mad that my mind goes all blank and then ..." He sighed, theatrically. "Disaster."
Conrad siphoned water and hated him.
Gabriel resumed his magic lessons with Christopher a month after the Stallery trip. This only made matters worse. While the explosions were much less destructive, Christopher was prone to saving them up for inopportune moments. While visiting Millie, who was still in bed with the flu, Christopher managed to reduce her nightstand to a pile of wood shavings. As they had only been talking about the types of snowfall Millie had experienced in Switzerland, this baffled everyone, especially Christopher.
Though it was no longer necessary for Mordecai and Flavian to plan lessons together, they had taken to shutting themselves in the upstairs workshop and discussing the problem of Christopher. At least, Conrad assumed that was the topic of discussion, because Flavian's lesson plans were deteriorating by the day. Sometimes he sent the intermediate group out into the castle without any instructions, aside from "Fix up Christopher's messes, will you?" Bernard always went straight down to the kitchens, and Conrad wasn't sure what Henrietta did; he, however, always went to find Christopher, maddening though he undoubtedly was.
Matters only came to a head when Christopher dropped a crystal chandelier during dinner. Pieces of crystal flew into the soup tureen. Bernard stopped talking stocks with Henrietta long enough to stare into the middle of the dining table. There was a deadly silence.
"Christopher," said Gabriel, his voice quiet, "for the final time, I am not sending Millie away to another series."
"You're sending her back to school!" Christopher cried, across the table. One of the chairs on the right side of the table broke; Flavian dropped through the seat, looking mortified, and Mordecai pulled him back up.
"I am not," said Gabriel, enunciating very clearly, "sending Millie to school. She will get better - I called in a doctor from Two - and then she will stay here. Because if not, you are going to pull the castle down around our ears. Now sit down and eat your soup."
There was another silence. Then Christopher sat down, brushed at a spot of soup on the sleeve of his shirt, and said with great dignity, "I knew it."
"Puberty after all," Conrad tried to whisper to Flavian, but he was too busy getting soup stains off of Mordecai's trousers to listen.